2015

Excellence in Technology

Winner

Pär Isaksson - Klarna

Since becoming Klarna’s CIO in January 2013, Pär Isaksson has overseen the build of a completely new production system. Capable of handling Klarna’s strong transaction growth, the new infrastructure was deployed in just seven months.

As part of the project he developed infrastructural support for the roll out of Klarna’s payment services in two new verticals – transportation and marketplaces – offering significant growth opportunities for the company.

Pär has also overseen the successful hire of a senior engineering management team at Klarna, leading the cultural transformation as the company adopted increasingly modern development techniques, whilst also forming stronger bonds with the company’s maturing product organisation.

Runners up

Siavash Ghorbani - Tictail

In the past 18 months Tictail has more than doubled its user base to over 75,000 online stores entirely through organic growth, transformed from a desktop-based to mobile-first entity, and managed to turn the US into its fastest-growing market less than 12 months after launching there. As Co-founder and CTO Siavash Ghorbani has been a pivotal part of this success.

Key to these achievements was growing the Tictail tech team from two to 22 in three years. Siavash recruited talented engineers with diverse skills, and has built a collegiate and agile product development process that has enabled the team to deploy updates and improvements to users on an hourly basis.

Simon Lambert - Wahanda

Launching four mobile apps in the past 12 months is paying off for Wahanda with 40% of its business moving from desktop to mobile in just nine months. Alongside this mobile transformation it has grown from a small London-centric startup, to a pan-European leader that’s launched in eight markets in less than six months, while posting 240% growth year-on-year.

Simon Lambert led the company’s mobile project, which included the acquisition and integration of Lithuanian-based mobile app developer, Lemon Labs. He also led the initiative to internationalise the Wahanda platform, including the integration of the systems of Salonmeister, a German equivalent of Wahanda, which it acquired in October 2014.

Simon’s team now includes nine different nationalities spread across five locations and this diversity has helped fuel Wahanda’s growth as a truly European player.